Reading from a leather bound book, Ivan didn’t bother looking up. Instead uttering something curtly from under his eyes, he went on addressing the class. The young boy’s brow furrowed at Ivan's words and I understood his reaction all too well.  Clearly, Ivan was being an ass.  But never had anything been more comforting. It was all the proof I needed to know that the jerk in the robe was without a doubt, my Ivan.

 The child looked to me then back to Ivan and shrugged as the rest of the class stared on, indifferent to my presence. Unsatisfied with the lack of answer, Ivan abruptly blew out a sigh and shut the book in equal frustration.

I braced. Digging my nails into the stone floor, I waited.  Standing was an option but I couldn’t move, partly because of exhaustion, both physical and emotional.  But also because it was Ivan—my Ivan, the man I’d travelled through hell and high water to reach. And in moments he would turn, he would lower his eyes and see me. And then…

And then?  That was the question.

How would he react? Would he be happy to see me? Would we have that magical movie moment where we would run toward the other with open arms? Would he hold me, promising to never let me go? Would he confess that he was miserable and breathing was a chore without me? Damn it, would he simply admit that he missed me? Would he wipe just one tear? One tear…

For a split moment, I dreamt those things. For a slight measure of time, I lost myself to my mind and stopped being Charlie the ass kicking faerie. I stopped being the crazy bastard daughter of an evil king. I stopped living in the madness that was my life and I allowed myself the fantasy. For that moment, I was just a regular girl in love.

I dreamt those things because I wanted—needed to believe them. Because it was there, at my most vulnerable state, filthy and broken, without a body and on the floor that I was moments away from learning the truth.  I was finally going to know the answer to His Essence’s question—Did Ivan love me.

I held fast to my girlish fantasies because seeing Ivan standing there within reach, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but on that floor, waiting for that answer. My pride and dignity were there, but so was my heart on my sleeve—you know what? Screw the sleeve. My heart was on the floor, alongside me equally bruised and just as bloodied. If Ivan wasn’t happy to see me, my pride would stay intact, so would my dignity as no one could take those away from me. But my heart? It was down to its last lifeline.

So I lay there, and I waited. I would have spoken but the knot in my throat clenched tighter to where it physically hurt, robbing my words.

Flicking his eyes up, Ivan looked to the dozen pairs of eyes that stared coldly in my direction. Trailing their gaze, finally, finally he saw me.

Silence.

Blanching, the book slid slowly from his hands, crashing against the floor with a resounding thud. In my head it all happened in slow motion. The sound of the book hitting the floor then falling open rippled into my hearing in lagging waves.  That might have also been because I was set to pass out at any moment.

There was more silence. It hung thick and sweltering all around us for a long, long moment.

He saw me, or at least I think so because the room still spun and things shifted around erratically to my eyes.  With what little I could muster, I pushed back onto my knees. Still, Ivan didn’t move. But he paled further which was surprising seeing as he was already nearly transparent.

 When he finally said something, he muttered it low and steady and I didn’t understand a word of it. But he wasn’t speaking to me. Whatever he said, the children rose from the carpet where they sat staring attentively at him. Like tiny soldiers, they lined up by Court in an eerie unison. Flipping their hoods over their heads and shielding their small hands beneath their sleeves, they filed out of the room. Passing on either side of me, their eyes peeked from under their hoods but there was no emotion. I could have just as well been invisible.

Marching down the dark corridor, their small steps gradually faded into the blackness until I could hear them no more. However one child remained, the little boy that had opened the door. Unlike the others, his eyes brimmed with feeling, swirling in different shades of pale yellow to deep green.  Staring at me with his eyes having settled on bewildering turquoise, he regarded Ivan in English, thankfully.  

“Is she the one, Professor? Is she the girl you died for?” His accent was thick but at least I understood him. I also realized that Ivan’s accent wasn’t Irish; it was the result of the Fae tongue being his first language. The child’s accent was the same.

Mute, Ivan’s stare remained fixed on me, shock spread across his sharp features. His hair had grown long, past his shoulders and he seemed to have aged. Not a drastic amount but he looked worn and sad. There was also doubt; it was clear in his eyes. I recognized it because it was the same doubt that ran through him when we linked through Kala’el.

Never looking away from me, Ivan nodded in answer. "Yes Pyros." His face remained blank.

The young child looked back to him. “So where is it? You said you did it because of love…where is this Love? I don’t see it.” Pyros looked behind me, then around the room. “I didn’t see anyone else come in."

Sighing, Pyros looked to me and canted his head. "Did you leave her, back in your world?”

My chest grew heavy. Pyros' innocence was so pure and open it hurt, but what hurt more were his words. Love? Ivan did it for love?

His voice hoarse and weak, Ivan explained, “You can’t see Love, Pyros. You feel it."

Looking back to me, the child sighed. “I still don’t understand.” Flicking his hood over his head and shielding the beauty, he lowered his head and walked out. For a moment he paused and looked over his shoulder. He wanted to understand.But lowering his head once more, he shrugged and walked out, closing the door behind him.

There was stillness.

Ivan closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head slowly.  He wanted to believe I was there, I know he did. But there was something else at work and Ivan revealed what it was when in opening his eyes, he whispered, “You’re haunting me.”

They were simple words but told me everything I needed to know. He didn’t believe it was me, standing there. Ivan was never the fearful type. But then and there, I’d never seen him so afraid. He feared.  Just as I’d dreamt my fantasies, he too dreamt. Just as my heart was down to its last lifeline, seeing Ivan so helpless I knew his heart was hanging on for dear life.

He confessed, “You walk beside me and I see you, dream of you all the time. I feel you, inside me and all around me, in my thoughts—you call my name...” His broken fragments made little sense, his confusion clear. Swallowing back the emotions warring within him, Ivan’s eyes suddenly darkened. “Are you even here?”

Stumbling crookedly to my feet, I stood. Hands at my side, bloodied and bruised in a torn and stained white dress, I stood before him—just me and my evenly spaced heartbeats. “I’m here.”

At that moment, I don’t know if I cared whether or not he was happy to see me because damn it I made it and I was there, still standing. I was thrown and dragged and kissed half to death, but I made it. So I stood there, my spine straightened as much as I could manage because all be damned, whether he loved me or not, I made it. I, Charlotte O’Dean made it.

“How?” Stumbling back, Ivan struggled with his next words. “Tell me you didn’t die.” he demanded, his jaw set hard but it was his eyes that betrayed his fear. They turned a pale fuchsia, the same way his mother’s eyes turned when sad.

My answer was unwavering. “I died for you, Ivan. I gave up my body to come here, to this place and petition for your soul. I was tested repeatedly, all for you. Kala’el—” A tear broke free from my eyes. It never had the chance to fall because before a blink, Ivan misted across the room tearing me into his arms.  His fingers threading in my hair, Ivan pulled me close, his nose grazing against my cheek preventing the tear from going any further. 

Searchingly he took in my face and body with his now black eyes. “Kala’el? What did he do? Did he hurt you? Tell me if he hurt you Charlotte—“ There was jagged terror laced with murder in his voice and he made no secret of it.

Feeling him so close and so worried, I should have answered readily. Instead, I closed my eyes and felt him. I lost myself to the vibrations of his trembling hands, the shuddering of his fragmented breaths. There was no doubt that he was there. There was no doubt I was there. And opening my eyes, we were still there. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a fantasy. This was our reality.

There was a lot to still discuss, true. There were truths to be hashed out, and accusations that needed answering to. But I couldn't bring myself to care, not there. I needed those moments. I needed him.

Seeing the concern swirling in his stare, the words wouldn’t come. All I could do was shake my head no as my answer.

What did Ivan say then?

Absolutely nothing.

That was fine because instead I found myself being slammed back, trapped between Ivan and the cool stone wall.  Hungrily he possessed my mouth, crashing his lips against mine in suffocating desperation.  It wasn’t gentle but fierce, urgent and painful, such beautiful intoxicating pain.

I hardly had the power to stand much less kiss him back but he was there and that was all that mattered. Gripping me tighter and making what breaths I could collect through bruised ribs even more impossible, his kiss grew deeper and wilder. But I couldn’t care for hurt, in fact I wanted more. Without an inch of space, Ivan was entirely too far and it burned between us.

Ivan broke away. Resting his forehead against mine, his hands went on a journey outlining my body in wondrous awe. In a manic whisper he spoke against my lips while his fingers  knotted then in my hair tightly. “Tell me I’ve gone crazy.”

His black stare glossed back to gray as he fought his emotions. They glistened over with what I would think were tears but I wasn’t sure if it were mine making everything so damned blurry.

Gripping my bruised fingers on his robe, I pulled him closer. “Ivan—“

“Say it again,” he cut me off, savagely taking my face into his hands. “Say my name again. I need to hear you say it…” he faded into a whisper.

Staring into the shallow gray pools of his eyes, the black in their depths threatened to break free.  Thing was, it had to. There could be no more pretending between us. We were Fae, we were primal love crazed, passion filled animals existing only for the other. So I said it. I said his name so there could be no disbelief. He wasn’t going crazy. It was me, there before him, saying, “Ivan.”

His eyes snapped shut as he released a pained growl, the sound of his name on my lips seeming to permeate his soul. Like snapping links, his deafening roar called to a primitive part within me, cutting through to a secret place that instantly shared in his pain, in his intensity. My skin burned with feverish emotion that threatened to give me flight. With the fire roaring within me, I could have flown straight to the heavens if allowed. A scorching blistering overtook my mouth like knives cutting through my gums. Another liberating and piercing roar tore through...mine.

When Ivan opened his eyes once more, there was infinite black. But in his dark pools, I saw that my eyes too had fallen into the same oblivion, my fangs glistening. We saw one another for what we truly were, black stare to black stare. We were two souls thrust into a life we never expected. Two souls bound together by something greater than us.  We were broken in our own respects, our walls crumbling like the very temple. But together, beat up and empty handed, we stood. Everything we did and had ever done had been for the other.  In the end each other was all we had, and so that was what we gave.

Before we’d given ourselves unknowingly, but this time our bond was made wholeheartedly and willing. It wasn’t slow, dreamlike and beautiful.  It was as frenzied as it was frantic. It was right. Whereas once blood kept our bodies alive, then and there, we were the others lifeline.  Together, without glamour and by no means a mistake, we took everything the other could possibly give.

It was bright, it was dark.

It was right, it was wrong.

It was beautiful, it was frightening.

It was pleasure, it was pain.

We were broken but we healed.

We were two but became one.

In that craziest of sanities, his name left my lips and my name left his in equal spaces. We were real. We weren’t going insane…

Or maybe we were because with our fingers and bodies entwined, in the hell that was the Underlands, we found Eden.

***

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